Maps for Players

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Tolrendordm

The Havenscoast Project

One of the things I always like to do in a campaign is have a map of the region that I can use as a handout for the players. I believe this helps them visualise the area and encourages them to seek out adventures based on the interesting places they can see.

This was always to my mind a classic part of the whole role-playing experience back in my AD&D days, and there is no reason why 4E adventuring needs to be any different.

Of course, cartography being one of my favourite pastimes, I always like to create a player handout with the feel of an actual in-game item. In the early days of the Cartographer’s Annual from Profantasy Software, in fact way back at Issue 6, some great tools were offered to help with just that. The main intent of the issue was to create maps that looked like they had been drawn on ancient parchment or paper, complete with ink stains and blots, ragged edges and previous use marks. One of the example maps also had a great set of overland map symbols that were designed to look hand drawn. You should check it out!

Anyway, the Havenscoast Project seemed like a good place to try out these tools, so here is my effort, a regional map as if drawn by a Camlan (the major city of the region) cartographer, on an old, re-used piece of parchment – hopefully just the sort of map a player character might come across…

The Havenscoast: Players' Map

Click on the image for a full-size high-res version. Comments and suggestions welcome. Its the first map I’ve tried using this style, and I’m pretty pleased with it, but I’m sure there’s plenty of room for improvement!

Posted in Area Map B4: The Havenscoast, Cartography, The Havenscoast Project | 2 Comments

Well …

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Tolrendordm

… that went well, didn’t it – NOT!

There was me in my second to last post, looking forward to the Havencoast project i.e. converting one of the best detailed areas of Tolrendor from its AD&D 2E days into 4E. Lots and fun posting…

And then 4 months passed 😦

Oh, I’ve got excuses:

  • Moved house – temporarily and unwillingly due to a major leak and insurance fun …
  • Work intruding – I work in IT in the banking industry, so you can imagine how much fun that is at the moment …
  • My mother visiting from NZ for 3 months – all good times of course – but it doesn’t leave much spare time!
But at the end of the day, that’s all they are, excuses!! Still disappointed I haven’t kept up the posting. In fact I’ve hardly done anything gaming at all. Kids are upset with me about that as well 🙂
But hopefully things are on the up. My friend is here next weekend from Bangkok, and D&D is on the agenda!! We only have a day or so, so it’ll be some ‘dip-in’ stuff – back to Restwell Keep and the Chaos Scar. Looking forward to it!

Anyway, hopefully this won’t be the last post for 4 months…

Posted in Chaos Scar Campaign, Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

Area Hex Maps – A Guide…

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Tolrendordm

The Havenscoast Project

 
Before moving on with more detailed maps, or indeed the first written content, I thought it would be interesting to talk (ramble?) a little bit about my hex mapping techniques.
 
As I’ve posted before, I use Campaign Cartographer 3, from www.profanstay.com almost exclusively for my mapping. I know there are a lot of people out there that think this product has a steep learning curve, and is awkward to use with its CAD-based slightly non-intuitive interface. Well, I agree to a certain point, even though I’ve had a fair bit of CAD experience in my professional career.
 
However, with some perseverance I think the results are worth the effort, especially if you subscribe to the Cartographer’s Annual, a monthly goodie bag that provides new mapping styles, symbols  and other cool stuff, along with comprehensive mapping guides. It was the July 2010 Annual issue that provided a mapping style for overland hex maps and got me going!
 
There are other simpler and still excellent hex mapping programs out there – for example Hexographer. I have this also, and have tried it, with good results. However, having spent quite a lot of time getting proficient (at best…) with CC3, and also because I also want to use a range of mapping styles, I’ve stuck with it!
 
So here is a simple guide (Area Hex Map – Mapping Guide) on how I produce Area Hex Maps like the Havenscoast one. It assumes a reasonable level of CC3 understanding, as its more about how I organise layers/sheets etc to get the effects that I want. Hope someone finds it useful 🙂
 
Any questions, I’m happy to answer comments!
 
 
Posted in Area Map B4: The Havenscoast, Cartography, RPG Technology, Self-publishing, The Havenscoast Project, World Building | 3 Comments

Old School Notes, 4E Style

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Tolrendordm

The Havenscoast Project!

Recently, as part of the RPG Bloggers Carnival for April, I posted about the maps I used to create by hand many years ago, and the complex organisation system I developed. Most of the maps I shared were from a specific area (World Map 1; Area Map B4!) of my home-brew world, Tolrendor, known as the Havenscoast.

To create that post, I had to delve through reams of my old notes, which was great fun. This material was all created over twenty years ago, so I decided it would be a cool idea to update it all, both by re-drawing the maps using Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3), my mapping software of choice, and by updating to 4E Dungeons and Dragons, the current rule-set I’m using.

In the interests of achieving something, I’m going to (initially) constrain myself to this particular area, and I’m going to concentrate on previously created material. This is not necessarily a direct conversion however, as I’m going to re-flavouring some aspects of the world in 4E style. I’m not setting myself any timescale targets either, but hopefully I’ll be posting on this project once a week.

As with most of my D&D creations, it all starts with a MAP!  So here is one I prepared earlier (i.e. for the background of the site), a re-creation of my original hand-drawn Area Map B4, using a Hex style in CC3:

 

The Havenscoast

 
 
I look forward to creating and sharing further maps and material as the project develops!!  
Posted in 4E D&D, Cartography, D&D Nostalgia, Self-publishing, The Havenscoast Project, Tolrendor Gazetter, World Building | 11 Comments

Waiting for Shadow …

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Tolrendordm

May 17th, 2011. The release of the Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond boxed set. I’ve had this on pre-order from pretty much the same day Amazon (at least in the UK) had it on their site!

Lots of pre-release reviews are starting to come out (e.g. Here, and here , and here  and here… ) and from what I’ve read so far it doesn’t look like I’ll be disappointed! Ever since the 4E cosmology came out I’ve been fascinated by the Feywild and Shadowfell concepts, and its good to see WOTC are supporting these well.

I’m far more excited about this release than the recent Heroes of Shadow release, as I’ve posted here: Player’s Options, Why Worry? And yet, I wouldn’t mind betting that the internet furore over S:GaB will be significantly less than it has been over HoS! In fact, probably so much so that I find myself wondering why WOTC does not concentrate far more on DM aligned products such as settings and adventures than the continuous stream of new player options.  They might get better press 🙂

I can understand the thinking that there are more ‘players’ out there than ‘DM’s’, given the normal 5:1 ratio of the standard adventuring party. However, I’m sure in most groups there is more than one at least part-time DM, and in any case in my experience it’s the DM types that spend the most on D&D products anyway. 

In my case, I have purchased a large number of DM aligned 4E products (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, the Planes supplements, the Draconomicons,  the Demonomicon, all the DM Guides, the Monster Manuals, the Rules Compendium etc…), but few Player aligned products (Player’s Handbook 1 and 3, Martial Power). This is obviously partly because I’m a DM through and through, but also because though I definitely enjoy the ‘flavour’ aspects that these options bring to 4E, I have access to all this material through D&D Insider. In reality, this material is also used so infrequently i.e. in a typical campaign the players are going to use it one (or perhaps a few more, depending on the mortality rate…) time when creating a character, and minimally each time they level up and need to choose a new power/feat/etc. It just doesn’t seem to warrant the shelf space 🙂

So it seems to me that the D&D Insider model is actually a better delivery mechanism for player material, whilst traditional printed material is better for DM aligned products? What do you think?

In any case, I can’t wait for May 17th … and I’m looking forward to the Feywild Box Set, at your earliest convenience, Wizards! 🙂

Posted in 4E D&D | 1 Comment

The End of a Great Carnival!!

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Tolrendordm

The April RPG Blog Carnival, featuring RPG Cartography, has just finished over at ‘A Character for Every Game’.

It’s been a great month, with 100s of superb posts, and I’m really pleased that I managed to contribute a couple of times, as Maps and Cartography are one of the primary reasons I enjoy our hobby so much (as I’ve posted here…).

I also wanted to thank Dyson (from ‘A Character for Every Game’) for hosting the Carnival, and for his massive effort in compiling a great summary of all the month’s posts. As a new blog on the scene, I fully appreciate getting a link in from one of the best and most prolific blogs out there. I’ve had more hits on the site since Dyson put his summary up than in total before that!!

The April Carnival might be over, but the magic of maps never ends…!

Posted in Cartography | Leave a comment

RPG Cartography – Another RPG Blog Carnival entry!

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Tolrendordm

  Well, it’s almost the end of the April RPG Blog Carnival on RPG Cartography, so I definitely wanted to contribute another entry. So far, I’ve blogged about my enjoyment of creating my own cool battlemaps, and also linked to my original entry on Maps and RPGs, in which I explained my love of maps and how they inspired my adventures.

In this post I want to share with you some examples of my old-style ‘mapping system’, which dates way back to the solo Basic and AD&D campaign I ran with my brother in the 1980’s. In those days obviously there was no fancy mapping software, so hour upon hour was spent drawing maps by hand. I even wrote a ‘Using the Maps’ guide to my system! Please take a look: World of Tolrendor Mapping Guide.

Looking back on this, it clearly reflects my overwhelming need to ‘organise’ information in meaningful (at least to me…) ways!! I’d be very interested in hearing how others approached this, either ‘back in the day’, or in these technological times…

Obviously however, this is really an excuse to share some of my old maps that fitted into the system I devised. These were all drawn 20+ years ago! Hope you enjoy them!

A World Map:

World map 1: North-Western Tolrendor

The intial world map of Tolrendor. It’s a bit hard to see the grid lines (i.e. 80 square mile grid), but you can clearly see the Area Map grid reference.

My 4E Tolrendor has undergone some topographical revisions, but it’s still basically the same world!

 

 

An Area Map:

An original hex Area Map D4 – one of the key campaign areas of my long-running solo campaign. It shows my typical simple icon based style using colour pencils.

A detailed map of the Caerdal Vale, nestled just south of one the great northern mountain ranges of Tolrendor.

 

 

 

Urban Area Map:

Camlan: Urban Area

This map shows the whole of Camlan city, labelling the key districts and landmarks. Further detail is broken down into 4 Urban Street maps, due to the size of the city.

 

 

Urban Street Map:

Camlan: Street Map A3

The bottom left corner of the city is shown in this Urban Street Map. You can see the use of both City Geomorphs (the square spaces that just indicate a geomorph number and the direction) and also a reference to an Urban Super Detail map. I used to hate drawing all the tiny buildings!      Urban Super Detail Map:

This part finished map shows a small part of the city in great detail – in this case a whole block that is the main base of the ‘Brotherhood of Stealth’, the powerful thieves’ guild of Camlan.      City Geomorph:

Each square = 5 yds, although these days I’d probably grid these to enable easy printing out of a battlemap.     Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this diverse set of maps as much as I’ve enjoyed digging through my reams of notes and maps to bring them to you! Its brought home to me how much of my enjoyment of our RPG hobby centres around the Maps!!